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Firefox 1.1 Plans Native SVG Support
Posted by
timothy
on Sun May 01, 2005 12:37 PM
from the finally-and-excellent dept.
from the finally-and-excellent dept.
Spy Hunter writes "The Scalable Vector Graphics format has yet to take off on the web, perhaps due to a small installed base of SVG-enabled browsers. That could soon change as the latest Firefox 1.1 nightly builds have started coming with native SVG support compiled in and enabled by default. If this feature makes into the Firefox 1.1 release (which is not certain, but likely, as the developers want it to happen) it will increase the number of web users who have an SVG renderer installed. But perhaps more interesting than that is the possibility of mixing SVG graphic elements directly into the markup of regular XHTML pages, freeing vector graphics from the small rectangle of a browser plugin and opening up a host of exciting new possibilities for web developers. This is enabled by the integration of SVG directly into the Gecko rendering engine, instead of as a browser plugin. With such a useful web developer feature available only in Firefox, could we soon start seeing websites asking their users to download Firefox to get the best browsing experience?"
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And... the big news (Score:5, Funny)
Re:And... the big news (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:And... the big news (Score:5, Informative)
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Firefox only? not for long... (Score:5, Insightful)
No, because IE will adopt a slightly different version of SVG and by virtue of it already containing 80% of the market, will force firefox to display the IE-compatible SVG, and things will be the same as ever before.
Monopolies, y'know?
You know what's funny (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Firefox only? not for long... (Score:4, Insightful)
You mean VML [w3.org]? New to Internet Explorer 5! [microsoft.com]
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Inline SVG in Internet Explorer with Adobe SVG (Score:5, Interesting)
Adobe's SVG viewer supports inline SVG in Internet Explorer (but not Firefox/Mozilla). It uses the "Binary Behaviors" ActiveX plug-in interfaces. It participates in the browser page rendering process like an ordinary html element, and you can use namespaces to embed SVG elements inline with html on the web page.
That's the same way Microsoft's VML elements work, which is just another Binary Behavior plug-in bundled with the browser. Basically you make a binary ActiveX object and give it an ID, then you declare a namespace to be associated with that id, which binds all elements in that namespace to be handled by the ActiveX object. It's a generic way to extend the web browser with ActiveX controls.
Mozilla also has a plug-in interface, but it doesn't provide the kind of inline rendering features that Internet Explorer's Binary Behaviors support.
When Adobe developed their SVG plug-in, they took advantage of some of the "advanced" Mozilla plug-in interfaces, to support their JavaScript integration (not inline rendering). But between Mozilla 0.99 and Mozilla 1.0, those plug-in interfaces changed, in a way that actually broke Adobe's SVG viewer in Mozilla [slashdot.org]. After Mozilla 1.0 shipped, any page that used even the simplest standard SVG would actually crash Mozilla.
Mozilla 1.0 crashing with Adobe's SVG plug-in was the first nail in SVG's coffin, and Adobe buying Macromedia was the last.
-Don
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Opera (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Opera (Score:5, Informative)
SVGT [SVG-Tiny] does not support scripting. SVGB [SVG-Basic] allows optional support of scripting, and includes all of the language features from SVG 1.1 to support scripting.
Both SVGB and SVGT support the full set of SVG 1.1's declarative animation features:
The language features to support animation through scripting and DOM are available in SVGB. SVGT only supports declarative animation.
SVGB and SVGT allow implicit targeting of parent elements, and targeting elements using the 'xlink:href' attribute.
SVGB and SVGT support linear, spline, paced and discrete animations.
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Well... SVG Tiny vs SVG Basic (Score:4, Informative)
SVG basic = PDAs
SVG = personal computers
And if you'd checked this page
http://www.w3.org/TR/SVGMobile/#sec-eleind [w3.org], which is Google hit #1 for 'svg tiny', you would see the differences between SVG tiny and SVG basic in terms of supported elements, styles (further down), etc.
In addition, anywhere where SVG basic at least reads "n/a", that's a feature that should be in SVG full.
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Typical (Score:5, Funny)
SVG Support... (Score:5, Insightful)
And you thought cyrillic characters were bad.
Re:SVG Support... (Score:5, Insightful)
Esentially, everything they do to make their spam less filterable makes it look less and less like legit mail. The result tends to be that it's either easier to filter or there's no difference at all (e.g., the use of a string of random dictionary words tends to have no effect, since the words are weighted neither 'spammy' nor 'not spammy').
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What is SVG? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:What is SVG? (Score:5, Informative)
On the other hand, SVG offers an easier (or what seems should be easier) method of dynamically-generating images like charts and graphs. Combined with some javascript (think XMLHttpRequest), you can change and interact with these graphs in realtime. Along with vector graphic's "infinite" resolution you've got a lot of powerful options for graphing alone.
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Re:What is SVG? (Score:5, Informative)
Well, they're both good for different things.
JPEGS are simple raster images. A jpeg and a bitmap are one in the same (with jpeg having good compression). Simply, it comes down to this bit is this color, this bit is this color, and this bit is this color. If you magnify raster images, you end up with blurred and horribly pixellated images that have almost no resemblance of the original.
A SVG (and similar technologies) uses vector graphics. The best way to explain this is thus: Graph a line Y=X on a xy coordinate plane. You end up with a 45 degreee angle. Now, if you were to view a portion between 0 and 10^-100(X) and 0 to 10^-100(y) it's still going to be a line. It's not going to be a stairstep pixelated crap.
Probably the best usage of SVG's would be simple images made for dramatically inbcreasing size (like icons in KDE) or other size-variation.
The only way to do pretty increasing size icons now are to shim a javascript to display 6 or so jpegs that were manually sized. These do not account for resolution on your screen.
Hopefully, Ive made clear what these things are.
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Re:What is SVG? (Score:5, Insightful)
Or should we all assume that we all are super-smart and questions are stupid? If you think so, no wonder people hate lots of techies.
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Addds (Score:5, Funny)
"only in Firefox" (Score:5, Insightful)
No.
First of all, it's also available in Opera 8.
Second of all, at the risk of sounding like a troll, people will simply find ways around using SVG until IE supports it
It's only OK if it's us. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:It's only OK if it's us. (Score:5, Insightful)
It isn't the number of sites that matter, it is their success in reaching beyond the Slashdot demographic. Preaching to the choir gains you nothing.
SVG could become the Ogg Vorblis of graphic formats. It's out there, but arrived too late and no one much cares.
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wasn't this in kde 3.2? (Score:5, Interesting)
STABLE VECTORS
2004-02-18 18:38:29 by Andreas Streichardt KDE 3.2 has been released and thus KSVG is stable now. If you want to have KSVG installed on your system please install the kdegraphics package. The KSVG team wishes happy vectoring. Please report any bugs via http://bugs.kde.org./ [bugs.kde.org]
More info... (Score:4, Informative)
Adblock *.svg (Score:5, Insightful)
Sounds like a whole new annoying type of advertising coming our way.
I would kill for SVG in schema (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm also sick and tired of wallpapering my cubial with schema print out from the plotter. SVG DB schema would be an excellent tool to have- go from a 30,000 ft view to a grass blade view with out having to load up different pages, or deal with a wall paper print out.
Someone wanna make the tool?
What graphic editors support SVG? (Score:5, Interesting)
I used to use Corel and WordPerfect Presentations, which has a propriety vector graphics format, WPG.
Inkscape (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:What graphic editors support SVG? (Score:4, Informative)
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No Firefox Only Sites, Please (Score:5, Insightful)
The keyword is best. Lets just hope some webmasters don't start doing what some IE designers have done, blocked out an entire website because of not using the correct browser. Most of the sites that say my Firefox is "not up-to-date as the latest Interenet Explorer" will render just fine, if they hadn't put up blockades to their content.
It's their loss.
"download Firefox to get the best browsing..." (Score:4, Insightful)
Sure, if the webmasters are fucking retards.
Think about it, if you use SVG all over your site and say "Download Firefox or you wont be able to view this site." the 9X% (I use 9X since no one agrees on numbers.) Internet Explorer users would simply hit the back button and go find somewhere else to get whatever they were wanting from your site.
The only case where that might be acceptable is maybe in a situation where there is only a few users or where you are the exclusive provider of information on a topic.
So yes, webmasters will start telling users that they have to use FF to view their website... if they're fucking retards.
ND
Please: SVG Maps (Score:5, Interesting)
Google Maps is a significant advance over what I've seen at Mapquest/Yahoo Maps, but they can do a lot better.
They could have used PDF, but that requires a separate and not-very-interactive application, or Flash, but that's plain evil. SVG really is the way to go for this.
Re:Please: SVG Maps (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:Please: SVG Maps (Score:4, Informative)
The only thing left to wonder is will it take 2 or 20 years?
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The Doors SVG Opens Up (Score:5, Interesting)
When you open up the SVG door, you don't just make space for "pretty pictures." You ALSO get,...
As SVG comes on line, at both the web-browser level and the desktop-programming level, and as people become proficient in these things, we'll make a major step forward in user interface.
Working with graphs will change the way we think. Our tools have, so far, afforded [emacswiki.org] creating hierarchical structures. That is, it's far easier to express hierarchy with text editors, than it is to express network. Hierarchy is fine, but it's only part of the picture. The other part is more-biological looking network organizations. As the tools come online to create biological organizations (as we see appearing in message-oriented programming models, component based developments,) we'll think about programming (and perhaps our world) in very different ways.
To make this a little clearer: If you look in magazine articles where they're discussing programming architecture and software layout, you're going to see lots of 2D diagrams with lots of pieces plugging into other pieces in a graphical layout- sort of like a circuit board. This is different than the way we have traditionally programmed, which is more like a tree shape. Even within object oriented programming, because our interface still affords tree layouts. Where we have explored beyond tree layouts, (complex networks of design patterns,) we have struggled with the user interface, and people have stretched out to make better representations that capture graph-like programs: Think of your clumbsy UML editors, and things like that- really trying to hack a solution between more-or-less linear code expressions, and the 2D graphs that we're thinking in.
When SVG is well understood, documented, with tools at desktop and web levels, we should start to see native 2D programming languages, that don't feel like either toy languages, or cheap hacks riding on top of other programming languages.
I've written more about this at Futures:SvgRevolution. [taoriver.net]
Flash, SVG, who cares (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm really not concered here with the reasons why.
But let me tell you what I see:
But, let's look in the other direction, Flash:
In short, I don't see a whole lot of excitement about Flash, except from one crowd: Artist and graphic designer types.
The point isn't whether my perceptions about Flash or SVG themselves are correct. The point is whether my perceptions of the communities around them are correct.
If designers and art types, and a handful of programmers are excited about Flash- okay, that's one thing.
But if most programmers and developers are excited about SVG, that's another thing entirely. Who writes the apps? Who writes the programming languages? Who writes the tools?
Devs have shown themselves not to be terribly excited about Flash. However, there's a lot of excitement around SVG.
So, you know- you put 2 and 2 together, and you come out with: SVG will be the one that busts the bubble. We won't be trapped in little boxes anymore.
Much of the software is already here. This thing has been in planning and development for years and years and yeras. So, we already have all these libraries, that are just being integrated into the respective platforms. So: We have every reason to believe this will work.
I don't know why Flash didn't work. I don't even have to know particularly why Flash didn't work. All I have to do is see is that SVG worked: It struck the chord the developers needed to play along with.
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"Best viewed with" is bollocks. (Score:5, Insightful)
I bloody well hope not. If I do I'll know that the website(s) in question have been designed by idiots. As Tim Berners-Lee states in Technology Review, July 1996:
"Anyone who slaps a 'this page is best viewed with Browser X' label on a Web page appears to be yearning for the bad old days, before the Web, when you had very little chance of reading a document written on another computer, another word processor, or another network."
So any sites saying "best viewed with..." are run by idiots - whether that "browser X" be Firefox, IE, Safari, Konqueror or even Lynx etc. etc.
Websites should be written to standards so they can be viewed by users in the browser of their choice. This is especially true to allow access for disabled users. That's the whole fucking point of the web.
And it's another reason that having Flash only websites is the WORST thing you can do. A colleague of mine at work is visually impaired and has to use a 21" monitor at 640 by 480 with a high contrast scheme. He still has to read the text by putting his face about 10" from the screen and scanning across the monitor. Flash websites are totally inaccessible to him.
And every day the internet fills up with crappy flash covered apologies for web pages built by idiots, for idiots, Ho hum...
Accept Header (Score:5, Interesting)
Accept: text/xml,application/xml,application/xhtml+xml,te
Will the new version prefer SVG in that accept header, or will SVG fall after png, in the q=0.5 category?
I'm askng because in certain software projects I work with, I use content negotiation to deliver the image format the user wants [PLUG: http://fdcl.sourceforge.net/ [sourceforge.net]] and that lets them decide if they can handle PNG or they must use the crummy gif equivalent. Firefox specifically prefers png, so that wins. I'm sure this would be the only method that SVG's are delivered to Firefox, since nobody wants to put a file onto a website that will never be seen.
Re:failure to take off (Score:5, Insightful)
Fair point, however I'd say that no, Flash hasn't supplanted the role that SVG could perform, and there still is a huge void waiting to be filled.
The reality is that the web is largely full of static, raster graphics (most graphs, as a simple example, exist as tiny craptacularly printing, non-interactive GIFs) - most of which would be better served by interactive, "infinite resolution" vector graphics.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/msdnmag/issues/03/07/Sc
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Re:failure to take off (Score:5, Insightful)
I think his point was more along the lines that Flash lowered the incentive for anyone to rush to market with a really good SVG implementation.
Of course you are correct that full SVG support would be a really good thing for the web. I would go so far as to say it's the most significant advancement of design possibilities since the introduction of the TABLE element.
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OpenLaszlo makes full blown AJAX apps on Flash (Score:5, Interesting)
Since usability guru Jakob Nielson wrote Flash: 99% Bad [useit.com] in 2000, a lot has changed about Flash. He worked with Macromedia [director-3d.com] to improve Flash's usability, and he sells a report with 117 design guidelines for Flash usability [nngroup.com]. So yes, it is possible to develop usable applications in Flash.
OpenLaszlo [openlaszlo.com] is an open source language and set of tools for developing full fledged rich web applications, which are compiled into SWF files that run on the Flash player. Laszlo/Flash is presently much more capable of implementing high quality cross platform user interfaces than dynamic AJAX/HTML/SVG currently is.
Laszlo is a high level XML and JavaScript based programming language. It's independent of Flash in the same way that GCC is independent of the Intel instruction set and Windows runtime, because they both compile a higher level language, and can target other runtimes and instruction sets.
Currently Flash is the most practical, so that's what Laszlo supports initially, but it can be retargeted to other runtimes like SVG, XUL, Java or Avalon, once they grow up and mature. But right now Flash is the best way to go, because of its overwhelming installed base and consistency across multiple platforms.
The problem with SVG is that it's extremely spotty and inconsistent across the different browsers and plug-ins and cell phones that implement it. So the lowest common denominator is very very low indeed. Dynamic HTML has the same inconsistency problems but with much worse graphics, and it's that horrible inconsistency that forces cross-browser web applications to be so clumsy and hard to use -- because they must restrict themselves to the lowest common denominator. But Flash is consistent across all platforms, and it has high quality graphics.
I've written complex, rich interactive web based applications in both SVG and Laszlo, and I like them both. I've also used Microsoft's VML [piemenu.com], which enabled animated vector graphics inline with html many years ago, and Dynamic [piemenu.com] HTML [piemenu.com] Behavior [piemenu.com] Controls [piemenu.com], which work pretty well, but only in Explorer, so they're a dead end.
SVG is wonderful, but it's lost its steam: too little, too late. Adobe, once its main proponent, has totally forgotten about it, and they're quite unlikely to put any more effort into it, now that they've bought Macromedia. Batik development has been stalled, and it's slow because it's "100% Pure Java". SVG has some nice advantages over Flash, but it will never beat Flash's 98% penetration.
I'd love to see SVG get its shit together, but it's going to be a long time the way the companies that were once sponsoring it like Adobe, Canon and Kodak, have appearently given up and gone on to other things. I'd love for somebody to prove that I'm wrong, but Flash has kicked SVG's ass in the market.
Once there's a fast, stable, full featured, ubiquitious SVG renderer (like Firefox may someday support), it will make a lot of sense to target it with the Laszlo compiler. But SVG is a huge complex standard, and it will take a lot of work to completely implement it in Firefox.
But there's a much more interesting and efficient route than building everything including SVG and the kitchen sink into a web browser, and that's to factor out and develop a reusable open source Flash-compatible SWF player,
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Re:failure to take off (Score:5, Interesting)
SVG is not just another vector-based image format, it is scriptable, patent-free, open source, and now built into Firefox. Yes, I know Flash is scriptable too...
with XMLHttp, SVG, and the latest nightlies of Firefox, I've been able to create dashboard programs very easily, with "guages", "warning lights", and all the stuff that my management wants to see in a simple easy to understand manner, all with open source software, and a little effort on my part.
It won't be that easy to get it implemented at my employer, but I was able to do it all in a couple hours without Flash.
I'm happy for Flash and SVG to coexist. I'm sure that they can live happily together.
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Re:failure to take off (Score:4, Insightful)
I dunno; if this thing works without crashing my browser, hogging 100% of the system's CPU, or blasting irritating sounds (and if it's used for useful content and presentation instead of lame menus or "flash-only" styled pages), it might just take off.
Flash is disabled on this machine because it does exactly one of two things in a web page: 1) show an ad, or 2) replaces perfectly servicable text (or even image-based) links in menus and navigation widgets that just ends up slowing everything down. I've already loaded the page. I shouldn't have to wait for the menus to load, too, just so your cute logo can flicker or rotate or so your menus can do impressive, flashy transitions that slow things down even more.
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Re:failure to take off (Score:5, Interesting)
Considering it was only made a standard in 2001, things are only going slightly slower than CSS and HTML. The real problem is that SVG is hard to implement. I don't disagree that the availability of Flash has lowered the priority, but as far as open-source implementations are concerned, I thnk it was destined to take a while.
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Re:cool something new again! (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm all for there being a library of extentions we can add into firefox if we wish to.
I don't think stuffing lots of features into firefox is what would make IE users switch.
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Re:Excellent (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:Excellent (Score:4, Informative)
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Re:SVG soon widely supported? (Score:5, Interesting)
IE will support SVG natively or via Adobe's horribly outdated SVG plugin?
Please provide a reference link.
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Re:"only in Firefox" - NOT (Score:4, Informative)
The reason for the excitement (and SVG soon to be switched on by default in FireFox) is a new SVG backend which is supposedly much better, although the old one always worked just fine for me.
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Re:Mixing SVG into XHTML: Standard? (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe. If the Mozilla foundation were a gigantic monopoly which seeked to break standards specifically for the purpose of creating compatibility problems with competing browsers in favor of their own proprietary alternative.
Wait. They're not a monopoly. They're implementing a standard and not breaking one. They're doing nothing proprietary.
Remember, it was Microsoft that coined the term "embrace and extend." Changes are not bad in and of themselves, but web browsers need to be interoperable and standards-compliant, so different browsers will render the same thing the same way. Copying IE's rendering to display those pages that are designed around IE is compatible with IE, but IE alone, and ultimately just gives Microsoft carte blanche to dictate the development of HTML. The Mozilla guys are doing it the right way here.
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Re:Opera (Score:5, Funny)
No, Opera supports SVGTiny. SVGTiny is to normal SVG as your penis is to everyone elses.
Hope this helps.
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